THE INDIAN ARMY IN 1914
(Note: For some inexplicable reason my last three newsletters, instead of appearing weekly, suddenly all popped up at once. Apologies. The gremlin has been exorcised - I hope - and from now on my perorations should appear each Sunday. Thank you for your forbearance, as my local railway station says.)
India in 1914 was administered by a very small number of British civil servants, the Indian Civil Service or ICS. All were graduates, usually of Oxford or Cambridge, and all were very carefully selected before being confirmed in their posts. They held the very highest posts in the administration – often an area the size of Wales, with a population of 10 million, would have only one British administrator while the judiciary, the police, the medical services, education, roads, forestry and all the other institutions of government would be Indian. Most Indians of 1914 had never seen an Englishman.
The adjective ‘Indian’ as applied to 1914 is an inexact term. India was perhaps a geographical entity but the vast majority of its inhabitants considered themselves as being of the Mahratta or Sikh or Rajput race, or of the Hindu or Buddhist or Mussalman religion or of Bengali or Madrassi or Punjabi domicile rather than as Indian. Only a few western educated Brahmins or embryo nationalist politicians tried to encourage a sense of Indian nationhood and called themselves Indians. India had never been unified, even the Mughals never succeeded in stamping their authority on the whole country, and the inhabitants accepted as a matter of course that they would be ruled over by whichever dynasty happened to be able to enforce its rule. The British had managed to establish dominance over the whole country and were generally considered to be preferable to previous rulers because they were administratively competent, had no local ties of religion or kinship, operated under a rule of law and were not corrupt.
The Army was not representative of the population as a whole. During the 19th Century, and particularly after the mutiny of part of the Bengal Army in 1857, the British recruited more and more from the ‘Martial Classes’, those races which had demonstrated an ability as soldiers, and which had remained loyal during the mutiny. This meant that by 1914 the Army was recruited very largely from the north and was composed in the main of Sikhs, Punjabi Mussalmans, Gurkhas, Rajputs and various types of Punjabis. Mahrattas and Madrassis were also included although they were not from the north. These men had traditionally been supportive of the British, their families had served in the Army for generations and they were generally the least politicised portion of the population. Soldiering was an honourable profession in India, it conferred status, izzat, and security, and competition to get into the army was intense. Only the very best were accepted and even during the war, when recruiting was vastly expanded, hundreds of thousands were turned down.
Educated Indians, particularly those from races or classes not eligible for enlistment, often claimed that the men whom the British classified as martial were those who were amenable, unlikely to ask questions and lacking in intelligence. There is some truth in this. A great many of the recruits to the army between the mutiny and 1914 were rural peasants, generally uneducated and often illiterate. They were not, however, unintelligent as is demonstrated by the ease with which they learned how to handle complicated equipment and to read and write once they joined the service and had the opportunity to be educated. Many recruits were sons or nephews of men who had themselves served.
While in the India of 1914 there were Indians at policy making level in the civil service and the judiciary, there were none in the Army where the highest rank an Indian could aspire to was Subadar Major. Soldiers however saw the British officer corps as a guarantee of neutrality from tribalism and a defence against politicisation. The Sikh of 1914 would have resented serving under an educated Bengali and he would have been worried about nepotism were he to serve under an educated Sikh. Apart from Indian doctors of the Indian Medical Services the senior officers of the Indian Army on arrival at the Western Front were British and would remain so.
Under the British Officers – only 11 in a battalion – was another layer of officers, that of the Viceroy’s Commissioned Officer, known in the vernacular as the Indian Officer. He was a man commissioned from the ranks after about 18 years’ service through every rank from Sepoy to Havildar, private to sergeant. These officers were the platoon commanders and company seconds-in-command under a British company commander. The VCOs were men of great ability, naturally highly intelligent, knowing everything that could be known about low level soldiering and with a deep knowledge and understanding of their men and the background from whence they came - a background which they, the VCOs, shared. They were brave, outstandingly loyal and impeccably disciplined. They were not, however, educated men. They had little knowledge of, and less interest in, the Army outside their own immediate regimental family. They had limited technical understanding, they had tribal and kinship interests within the bodies of men they commanded and they had the innate conservatism of men from a rural, subsistence economy where very little changes.
The Indian Army operated by using the British officer as the instigator and promulgator of policy, while the Indian officer executed it. The British officer was seen as being above tribalism and he had no vested interest in extending favour to one man rather than another. The British officer was educated and could make sense of operational orders written in English. The British officer was impartial. There was a touching - and nearly always justified - faith in the honour and integrity of the British officer who, while he might not always come to the decision that the soldiers would prefer, would at least come to it without fear or favour. While the British officer was not necessarily of more than average intelligence - but then soldiering is not a cerebral profession - in the main he took pains to get to know his men’s language and to understand and respect their customs and culture. When Indian or Gurkha soldiers wanted to indicate something that was certain, sure and to be trusted utterly, they often used the expression ‘like the word of a British officer’.
Although technically junior to the British officer the Indian officer was accorded great status and respect by the British officer. The Indian officer addressed the British officer as ‘Saheb’ but the British officer addressed the Indian officer as ‘Saheb’ too and, when he could, always took advice from the Indian officer before coming to any important decision. The Indian officer saw himself as having a vital role to play, as indeed he had, and as having a vested interest in ensuring that the British officer’s ideas were correctly carried into practice.
While every man of the Indian Army held the King Emperor in almost mystical awe, he was of course a remote figure whom none had ever seen and he lived a very long way away. The real focus of a man’s loyalty was the regiment. This was an organisation big enough to offer him a complete life within it, with security and shelter, with promotion and honour if he merited it. It was also an organisation small enough for the man to know everyone else in it. Most soldiers served as long as they possibly could and hardly ever left the regiment except perhaps to attend a course or spend a tour as an instructor at the musketry school. Every man, however junior in rank, had his own place within the regimental family. The regimental system encouraged this family atmosphere. Every regiment had its own unique individuality whether it was in racial composition, or history, or exotic lineage, or uniform, or even prowess on the sports field. The modern term is peer bonding and this took place not just amongst and between the native ranks but between the soldiers and the British officers too. The sepoys were not the peers of the British officers in terms of education, or wealth or power, but all believed that they shared a common bond of loyalty to and belief in the regiment - as the vast majority of them, British officers and Sepoys alike, did. Loyalty, then, was personal. Men did their duty because they believed in the honour of the regiment as personified by ‘their’ Saheb.
British officers for the Indian Army were very carefully selected. First they had to do well at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and anyone not passing out in the top ten percent of the order of merit had no chance of acceptance. They then spent a year with a British battalion in India during which time they had to study for and pass the intermediate level Hindustani (Urdu) exam, which was the lingua franca of the Indian Army. After that they went to their Indian regiments where they were on probation for two years during which time they had to pass the higher level Urdu which included Hindi as well, and also an exam in the language of whatever regiment they were in – Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Mahratta, Gurkhali or whatever. If at any time during this probationary period the officer was considered unsuitable – that is if the subadar major thought he was not the type to get on with Indians or Gurkhas – then he was transferred to the British Army with his papers marked ‘not suitable for service with Indian Army troops’. As the initial selection was rigorous, this hardly ever happened.
In August 1914 two infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade of the Indian Army were mobilised for service on the Western Front, which necessitated a swift reorganisation from the Indian order of battle of eight small companies in an infantry battalion to the British system of four. It also required the replacement of the Mark II Le Enfield rifle with the Mark III. Like their British counterpart Indian divisions had three brigades, with each brigade having three Indian or Gurkha battalions and one British battalion (later one British or one Gurkha battalion). Later the Indian cavalry on the Western Front was increased to two divisions and the infantry moved to Mesopotamia. Indian troops also served in Gallipoli, Salonika, Palestine and in the Allied Intervention Force during the Russian Civil War 1918 to 1920.
Excellent article Gordon, beautifully capturing the uniqueness of the old Indian Army